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Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

For the first time in recent memory, an F1 race that was commercial free from start to finish. Kudos to ESPN! What a joy to see a race uninterrupted. Vettel held off Bottas for an exciting finish. Tire strategy was the deciding factor. Another one or two laps and I think Bottas would have passed Vettel for the victory. Really pleased for Torro Rosso and Pierre Gasly for their 4th place finish with a Honda engine no less. It's going to be another great season.
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

Wow was the "crowd" disappointing last night in Phoenix. According to a story in USAToday the track and local promoters did a good job promoting the race. Indycar keeps talking about the coming resurgence and we hear that this year there will probably be more than 33 cars at least practicing for the 500 in May, I just don't think we're seeing it from an attendance or ratings viewpoint. It's odd, because as a product, it surpasses NASCAR by so much it's not funny.
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

Runsub5 said:
For the first time in recent memory, an F1 race that was commercial free from start to finish. Kudos to ESPN! What a joy to see a race uninterrupted. Vettel held off Bottas for an exciting finish. Tire strategy was the deciding factor. Another one or two laps and I think Bottas would have passed Vettel for the victory. Really pleased for Torro Rosso and Pierre Gasly for their 4th place finish with a Honda engine no less. It's going to be another great season.
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Took a while to realize that there were no ads. Pretty sweet!

Vettel did a great job changing plans way into a stint of the soft tires- that really should not have worked out that he could have survived that long on those tires relative to the mediums- I don't like Seb, but have to give him a lot of credit to be just fast enough long enough that Botas had not enough time to make the pass.
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

WeAreNDHockey said:
Wow was the "crowd" disappointing last night in Phoenix. According to a story in USAToday the track and local promoters did a good job promoting the race. Indycar keeps talking about the coming resurgence and we hear that this year there will probably be more than 33 cars at least practicing for the 500 in May, I just don't think we're seeing it from an attendance or ratings viewpoint. It's odd, because as a product, it surpasses NASCAR by so much it's not funny.
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They should move it back to a Sunday afternoon. Like it should be.
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

WeAreNDHockey said:
Wow was the "crowd" disappointing last night in Phoenix. According to a story in USAToday the track and local promoters did a good job promoting the race. Indycar keeps talking about the coming resurgence and we hear that this year there will probably be more than 33 cars at least practicing for the 500 in May, I just don't think we're seeing it from an attendance or ratings viewpoint. It's odd, because as a product, it surpasses NASCAR by so much it's not funny.
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The ratings have clearly been on the rise for a while, I don't think that is disputable. I read somewhere (god only knows the source) that attendance was up this year for Phoenix so IDK. Absolutely a superior product to NASCAR. Hopefully this new aero situation does reduce the cost for teams and can help add cars to the fray.

Seems like Robert Wickens is for real. Probably should be the points leader right now. Rossi continues to shine. It's going to be him vs Newgarden for a long time in this series. Also really impressed with Ed Jones - he really blew a chance for a podium there but I think Chip filled that 10 seat with a good one. Already looks a lot better in the 10 car than TK did last year.
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

Runsub5 said:
For the first time in recent memory, an F1 race that was commercial free from start to finish. Kudos to ESPN! What a joy to see a race uninterrupted.
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Kudos to ESPN. They (and Liberty Media) got it right. I can watch F1 again...
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

Nick Papagiorgio said:
Seems like Robert Wickens is for real. Probably should be the points leader right now. Rossi continues to shine. It's going to be him vs Newgarden for a long time in this series. Also really impressed with Ed Jones - he really blew a chance for a podium there but I think Chip filled that 10 seat with a good one. Already looks a lot better in the 10 car than TK did last year.
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Wickens entire career has flown under the radar. I had always paid close attention to him and he always impressed me, so I expected him to do very well once he finally got a break.
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

Nick Papagiorgio said:
The ratings have clearly been on the rise for a while, I don't think that is disputable. I read somewhere (god only knows the source) that attendance was up this year for Phoenix so IDK. Absolutely a superior product to NASCAR. Hopefully this new aero situation does reduce the cost for teams and can help add cars to the fray.
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Actually the rating for the season opening race was flat from last year and down 20% from 2016. The number of viewers has gone down in each of the last two years as well. I have not yet seen the ratings numbers for Sunday's race. As for the attendance, it was supposedly better than last year, but really, it had nowhere to go BUT up. Estimates of 18,000 last year were laughable if the track actually has 50,000 seats as most sources seem to say. The grandstands were perhaps 25% full Saturday night at best, so maybe there were 12,000 there.
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

manurespreader said:
I think the indy product is improved to the point that it's worth watching again, which I'm very glad to see. And Ferrari wins two straight. Who would have thought that.
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And ESPN finally gets their act together, showing F1 races commercial free. Now that I had never thought was going to happen!

P.S. Do we start a pool on which race Ferrari begins their choke job...?
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

joecct said:
Canada
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I'm going to give them to at least the three in a row sequence right after Canada, when the "wonderful" Italian management structure causes the team to implode under the scheduling stress...
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

Russell Jaslow said:
And ESPN finally gets their act together, showing F1 races commercial free. Now that I had never thought was going to happen!

P.S. Do we start a pool on which race Ferrari begins their choke job...?
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There were indications of that today- Kimi should have pitted in the SC (Just like Lewis should have). It's interesting to see that only Red Bull were ready for that happening at the last moment. And Ricciardo really too advantage of that.
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

alfablue said:
There were indications of that today- Kimi should have pitted in the SC (Just like Lewis should have). It's interesting to see that only Red Bull were ready for that happening at the last moment. And Ricciardo really too advantage of that.
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Things happened so fast at that point (heck, I think the two leaders were already past the pit entry point, so the others were pretty darn close to it), that I don't blame the decision makers for not reacting quickly. Red Bull knew all along they had to be very aggressive to try and pull the upset, so as soon as the SC car came out, they immediately knew they were going to pit and could call their drivers in right away. They never had to think about it.
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

Russell Jaslow said:
Things happened so fast at that point (heck, I think the two leaders were already past the pit entry point, so the others were pretty darn close to it), that I don't blame the decision makers for not reacting quickly. Red Bull knew all along they had to be very aggressive to try and pull the upset, so as soon as the SC car came out, they immediately knew they were going to pit and could call their drivers in right away. They never had to think about it.
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I do, a lot. If Mercedes had a weak point in their dominance, it's been SC strategy. They should always have something game planned around it, ready to go. It's not as if these events never happen- and it's also easy to be ready- have a stack of tires in warmers ready to go all the time. I don't see it at all that Red Bull took a chance- they grabbed the opportunity to get a massive increase in pace that Mercedes and Ferrari decided against for Kimi and Lewis. Both of which were behind Verstappen, and could have easily been ready to go.

Wolf has excused this as 20-20 hindsight, and I just don't buy that. The situation was just not being ready for it.

There were plenty of laps left to make those tires last, the pace was clearly enough (based on data, not post race analysis) that Kimi and Lewis would have had the pace to easily get Valteri and Seb. Even if the SC call came out 10 seconds earlier, the same info applies- all cars should have pitted- they had plenty of space to the latter half and they would have had pace on a track easy to pass on.

Red Bull didn't take a chance, they knew exactly the cost-gain equation. And won.

It's not that hard to have a running game plan in a program where you can always make an easy call based on available data. IMHO, this was a no brainer.
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

alfablue said:
I do, a lot. If Mercedes had a weak point in their dominance, it's been SC strategy. They should always have something game planned around it, ready to go. It's not as if these events never happen- and it's also easy to be ready- have a stack of tires in warmers ready to go all the time. I don't see it at all that Red Bull took a chance- they grabbed the opportunity to get a massive increase in pace that Mercedes and Ferrari decided against for Kimi and Lewis. Both of which were behind Verstappen, and could have easily been ready to go.

Wolf has excused this as 20-20 hindsight, and I just don't buy that. The situation was just not being ready for it.

There were plenty of laps left to make those tires last, the pace was clearly enough (based on data, not post race analysis) that Kimi and Lewis would have had the pace to easily get Valteri and Seb. Even if the SC call came out 10 seconds earlier, the same info applies- all cars should have pitted- they had plenty of space to the latter half and they would have had pace on a track easy to pass on.

Red Bull didn't take a chance, they knew exactly the cost-gain equation. And won.

It's not that hard to have a running game plan in a program where you can always make an easy call based on available data. IMHO, this was a no brainer.
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This article explains a lot:

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/23198698/chinese-grand-prix-how-five-men-lost-one-man-won-shanghai

I'm not totally disagreeing with you. And at the very least, teams should have split alternate strategies for their two drivers (just as they usually do under normal circumstances) when changes in the race occur. But, this particular situation wasn't as easy to decipher. And the article implies that they were not expecting the Red Bulls to gain as much as they did with new tires, so they went with the "track position" is king strategy. Plus, Kimi had just been in, so new(er) tires probably would not have made much of a difference for him versus losing track position.

Hamilton on the other hand was going nowhere from the start, so he certainly should have tried it just because nothing else was working. But maybe the team is still gun shy after the Monaco debacle...
 
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Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

The thing about "track position" is that it's not quite as import on that track as others. It's one of the few places where an advantage can be used.

Unless, the Mercedes and Ferrari are just that bad following other cars. And they knew that, too- it's not as if passing was that hard during the race, and had either Ferrari or Mercedes had given the two drivers a chance, seems like they would have not had that much trouble dispensing with Vettel and Bottas.

What's the most frustrating thing- neither Ferrari nor Mercedes seemed to have learned from past SC/VSC/ pitting mistakes. So we can expect these issues to continue, and the "hindsight is 20-20" excuses to continue, when, in fact, good planning could take advantage of the situation.
 
Re: Open Wheel Racing 2018- with less winglets.

I’m happy for Ricciardo, that was a good win for him and good for F1 really. To show another team just may be catching up with Mercedes and Ferrari.

I like this Vesrstappen kid, he’s got guts and a go for it attitude.


Long Beach had 185,000 spectators and evidently NBC is wasting no time announcing INDYCAR is coming in 2019. They announced it during an nhl game last week. Good stuff!

Rossi has turned into the real deal with Newgarden as well. At this point both of these guys are destroying Andretti and Rahal. I hope we see a rivalry develop between Rossi and JoNew.
 
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